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Library / Literature & Fiction

Tales from Two Hemispheres

by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

Pages
about 202
Category
Literature & Fiction
Language
English
Reading time
3.7 h at 250 wpm
Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 2 h at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

From Castle Garden, Halfdan made his way up through Greenwich street, pursued by a clamorous troop of confidence men and hotel runners.

“Kommen Sie mit mir. Ich bin auch Deutsch,” cried one. “Voila, voila, je parle Francais,” shouted another, seizing hold of his valise. “Jeg er Dansk. Tale Dansk,” [1] roared a third, with an accent which seriously impeached his truthfulness. In order to escape from these importunate rascals, who were every moment getting bolder, he threw himself into the first street-car which happened to pass; he sat down, gazed out of the windows and soon became so thoroughly absorbed in the animated scenes which moved as in a panorama before his eyes, that he quite forgot where he was going. The conductor called for fares, and received an English shilling, which, after some ineffectual expostulation, he pocketed, but gave no change. At last after about an hour’s journey, the car stopped, the conductor called out “Central Park,” and Halfdan woke up with a start. He dismounted with a timid, deliberate step, stared in dim bewilderment at the long rows of palatial residences, and a chill sense of loneliness crept over him. The hopeless strangeness of everything he saw, instead of filling him with rapture as he had once anticipated, Sent a cold shiver to his heart. It is a very large affair, this world of ours--a good deal larger than it appeared to him gazing out upon it from his snug little corner up under the Pole; and it was as unsympathetic as it was large; he suddenly felt what he had never been aware of before--that he was a very small part of it and of very little account after all.

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